30-Minute Kitchen Cleanup

Clean-Kitchen Priorities

Keeping a clean kitchen not only gives you a hygienic place to prepare meals, but it also makes you feel better about spending time cooking.

Food Hygiene

—20 Minutes

For a quick clean, focus first on food storage and preparation areas—your fridge and countertops.

Take all the food, shelves and drawers out of your fridge. Shelves and drawers can get messy from food falling out of opened packages or dribbles from sauce bottles but are easy to wipe down with warm water and all-purpose liquid cleaner. After cleaning, as you put the food back in, try to arrange it in a more useful way by placing ingredients you use most at the front.

Take a quick look at expiration dates at the same time and throw out anything that’s too old. If your freezer is beginning to look like the Arctic, set aside another time to make it a priority rather than adding it to this focused clean.

On to the countertops. Take everything off (including jars and cutting boards) so you can really clean all the way to the backsplash. On a day-to-day basis, we tend to just wipe away the debris of food preparation, but messes stay hiding in every corner!

Adding Sparkle

—10 Minutes

Most ovens these days have a 30-minute clean built-in. Use it! And while that’s working for you, give the kitchen windows a wipe, too—grease in the air can make the inside of the windows a bit grubby without you even realizing it.

Lastly, how often do you wash your sink? Give the sink its own quick clean with cleaning spray. Don’t forget to clean around the faucet.